


It's just the start of everything you want

by PornyZiallFeels



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Fluff, M/M, lirry if you squint super duper hard, ziall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PornyZiallFeels/pseuds/PornyZiallFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn leaves Niall a note listing all the reasons he's moving out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's just the start of everything you want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arikrll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arikrll/gifts).



> It's been a hella long time since I wrote ziall, which breaks something inside but yeah so i wrote this little diddy with the help of Ari who helped me come up with Niall's quirks or annoyances lol. It's nothing great just a shit ton of fluff and a tiny bit of angst maybe, not really.

Niall returns home from his final exam of the year, rushing into the flat he shares with his best mate Zayn ready to propose they throw the party of the decade to celebrate surviving junior year of university. Only instead of being greeted with an equally excited best friend he finds a note on the counter under a brand new box of Niall's favorite biscuits, with his eyebrows wrinkled on his forehead in confusion he approaches the counter, noting that Zayn had used the back of the receipt for the biscuits as well as a few other household essentials and couldn’t hide his grin.

It was just like Zayn to do the house shopping even though it was Niall’s turn to, still smiling he moved the box of cookies and fought the urge to tear into them right then and there. _First things first_ , he reminded himself and raised the receipt up to his face because he’d slipped his glasses into his backpack after finishing his exam and didn’t feel like digging for them, but Zayn had such a neat tiny handwriting that he ended up squinting and holding the note within just a few inches of the tip of his nose as he read:

_Nialler,_

_Hi. I didn’t really know how to tell you this and I know I’m choosing the cowards way to go about it and for that I truly am sorry but I just knew I’d never be able to look you in those eyes of yours and tell you that I won’t be living with you again next year._

Niall bit his lip in confusion him and Zayn have lived together for the last three years, after being randomly paired to dorm together based on a survey they filled out freshman year and they’d pretty much been inseparable ever since so this news made absolutely no sense, hoping Zayn would explain himself Niall read on:

 _I know what you’re thinking_ what the fuck man _? Am I right? Anyways no need to worry I won’t leave you hanging I’ll spend all summer looking for a replacement so that you won’t have to struggle to pay rent next year on your own alright—even if it takes the_ entire _summer I’ll do it. You also might be wondering what brought this on and is it really worth all that trouble—the whole moving out process, what could you have possibly done to finally drive me away after three years…well Nialler I am all too happy to tell ya._

_For one thing you never refill the ice trays; you snore like a machine gun and fart the most toxic fumes I’ve ever been exposed to in my life! You don’t clean for shit, I mean would it kill you to take a rag to a dish every once and a while?_

He frowned, looking up from the note to glance around first the kitchen taking in the unwashed bowl and spoon from this morning’s cereal as well as his plate underneath from last night’s dinner the red pasta sauce already dried, crusted and caked on he knew it was going to be a bitch to scrub off and chastised himself for not remembering to soak it like Zayn was always telling him to.

 _You leave your shit everywhere, it’s like you see every available surface as just another spot to fill, your clothes, shoes, fucking sheet music is just strewn about the living room like it isn’t our_ shared _space, seriously why do you even have your own bedroom when clearly everything you own can be found draped across the back of the couch, under the coffee table, or hanging precariously from the lampshade, god I could go on for ages about how annoying it is to wake up from a kip on the couch only to find a pair of your pants stuffed between the cushions right by my bloody head, but I haven’t got all day so moving on…_

Moving onto his tiptoes so that he could see over the counter into the living room his eyes roving over the clothes and personal belonging scattered about on seemingly every available surface and shook his head, no wonder Zayn was sick of living with him he was a right slob with no consideration for his flat mate, he’d probably be sick of living with him too he reckoned.

 _You never share food, but you’ll whine for days if I don’t let you pick off my plate, you use my bar soap which is just gross but then you sometimes leave fucking pubes on it and I could seriously kill you Niall, I am_ not _kidding! You play your fucking guitar nearly 24/7 and I_ get _it you’re talented but I can’t really appreciate being ‘serenaded’ with Buble at 3am when I have to be up for a 7am Medieval Literature lecture the next morning, and your voice it’s bloody lovely alright but must you sing at the very top of your lungs when you’re in the shower, is that terribly necessary?_

Niall made a hurt noise, thinking that it wasn’t his fault that he was blessed with an amazing metabolism—Zayn knew that, he was always hungry and was it his fault that food always tasted just slightly better coming from the older boy’s plate? As far as leaving pubes on Zayn’s soap that had been one—maybe two times and he’d been in a rush.  He couldn’t believe Zayn was complaining about his singing though when he was Niall’s biggest support sometimes making requests and Niall never knew when inspiration would hit him, so yeah 3am seem to be the best time for him to write and Zayn was always the first person Niall wanted to share his music with, because he got it, he got Niall and yeah sometimes he forgot to mind the time, but he just figured Zayn didn’t mind being Niall’s muse.

 _You never remember to do the grocery shopping when it’s your turn and conveniently “forget” to reimburse me when I inevitably end up doing it for you. Not to mention the fact that I do_ all _the cooking in the house which talk about selfish; did it ever occur to you that I might enjoy a meal cooked for me every once in a while? Shit I just got a war flashback of that time you burned water trying to make ramen noodles so maybe scratch that one you should probably be banned from the kitchen entirely and ok maybe it’s nice having you to play guinea pig when there’s a new recipe I want to try, because the Niall Horan seal of approval kind of means a lot to me._

Zayn was the best cook right behind Niall’s own mum and Niall would literally starve if it weren’t for him, because the few times he’s tried cooking ended in near tragedy like the ramen noodle incident and the one time he’d tried to make tin soup for Zayn when he was feeling poorly, there had been actual flames that time that Niall had had to beat out with a wet dish rag, he’d still bowled the soup and brought it to Zayn in bed and Zayn had finished the entire thing with no more than a grimace even if Niall is 100% sure chicken noodle soup wasn’t suppose to _crunch_ that way and had even _thanked_ him.

 _You leave your stupid romantic comedies in the DVD player just for an excuse to get me to watch them instead of something_ good _like The Avengers, and not that I’d ever admit it, but maybe I don’t really mind all that much because then you will cuddle up to me and I can bury my nose in your hair without it being completely creepy and we’ll cry together when Marley dies or when Noah and Ally kiss in the rain and I just want to do that all the time but um…_

The blonde blinked confused eyes because surely he had to have read that wrong, did Zayn just say he enjoyed cuddling with him, crying on his shoulder, _smelling_ him?  His eyes had to be playing tricks on him, because there was no way Zayn felt that way about him, just no.

 _You’re always_ _laughing, like_ always _, sometimes at nothing. I’ll literally be lying on the couch doing my lit reading and you’ll laugh out of nowhere but when I look up you’re just standing there in the space between the kitchen and the living room and that’s it, you don’t even have your phone out to be laughing at that and the TV isn’t on so what could possibly be so funny? Not only that but you’re so loud and distracting when you laugh, throwing your entire body into it. It’s quite the sight to behold actually. In fact sometimes when I’m watching you play a gig at a pub and the crowd really gets into it, watching you up onstage in complete awe, I have to fight the urge to nudge the nearest person in their side and say ‘you think that’s something you should see him laugh’ but I don’t, of course I don’t because that would be mad. I love your laugh._

Niall couldn’t help but gasp at that four letter word, sure they said it to one another all the time but this time it was different, this time it meant more and he wasn’t at all surprised to find that the paper were shaking in his trembling fingers as he continued to read:

 _Did you know you’re a crazy ass drunk? Like the time we all got spectacularly drunk on your birthday and us and the boys dressed up as superheroes and Liam, the bloody knight in shining armor he is, saved you from drowning yourself when you tried to climb into our fish tank claiming to be Aquaman even though you were clearly dressed as Spiderman and Jesus let me tell you it wasn’t easy being around you that night in that lycra costume, it was sort of pure torture because it left absolutely_ nothing _to the imagination and I spent the entire night trying to drunkenly press up against you, making it look like an accident and keep as much distance between us as I could so that I didn’t…but you weren’t having it were you Niall? Always were a cuddly drunk…Oh, oh! Which brings me to another thing, for someone who claims they can hold their drink like a champ you’re ridiculously handsy after you’ve had a few and you always_ always _insist on sleeping in my bed and I hate it because you make the cutest noises in your sleep and your nose wrinkles up like a bunny and I just want to throw myself out the window before I do something dumb like kiss your stupid fucking face, that’s not stupid at all actually. It’s kind of really beautiful?_

Beautiful, did Zayn just call _him_ beautiful? Did that boy not own a mirror? Niall shook his head because of course Zayn did, Niall himself and the boys were always ragging on him for perfecting his smolder face but that’s just it Zayn had a smolder face, in fact his entire being was one big gorgeous smolder face. He was the epitome of beauty and Niall could not believe he was calling Niall beautiful. It just didn’t make any sense.

_The way you walk around in you boxers like you’ve got some kind of clothes allergy. As if that weren’t bad enough, you have absolutely no concept of personal space so I am perpetually sat with a pillow over my lap because your bloody fit arse is waggling in my face while you attempt to twerk through Miley Cyrus’ entire Bangerz album, we’re talking a full hour straight of agony and don’t even get me started on the murderous thoughts that run through my mind when I see you hanging all over someone else—not even our mates are exempt. Do you know I once bit Harry because you drunkenly snogged him under the mistletoe that one time sophomore year? Yeah not one of my proudest moments and Liam nearly clocked me for doing so but you know Harry can’t hold a grudge and had simply patted me on the leg with an understanding in his eyes that nearly broke me and let a grumpy Liam tug him towards the bathroom for the first aid kit in case I broke the skin or something._

He couldn’t help but laugh at the mental image of Zayn biting Harry, he vaguely remembered that night, it was the night Zayn first introduced Perrie as ‘this lovely girl from my figure drawing class’ who looked at Zayn like he was everything good and right in the world, which ok Niall could relate having thought the same thing a time or two— _thousand_ but, she wasn’t allowed, Zayn was _his_ so he had downed even more vodka and when he found himself standing beneath the mistletoe he’d giggled and dragged Harry the closest to him under it with him and snogged him as a joke. They’d even laughed about it afterward. To think that Zayn had seen it and was actually jealous was baffling. Even more so he remembers asking Harry about his wrapped finger later that night and Harry the shittiest liar known to man had just shrugged and said Louis stabbed his with a fork for the last gingerbread man cookie. At the time he’d believed him because Tommo was a psycho at best but now knowing the truth he had to shake his head and wonder how he got so lucky to find such great mates.

 _You just make me so damn crazy Niall and it’s been that way for as long as I’ve known you, since freshman year even, when I walked into our room that first day and dropped my bags on the side of the room you hadn’t already dumped your stuff, thinking no one was in the room only for you to pop up out of a box all bright teeth and twinkling eyes, shouting out ‘Hi’ before erupting in laughter at my horrified face. I’ve been gone for you ever since and it’s only gotten harder and harder as the years go by because you just keep getting hotter and your music more beautiful and really the number one reason for me moving out is because there’s_ nothing _I don’t love about you. Not the dirty dishes, the late night jam sessions, dirty pants in my face—hell I’d take a lifetime of pubes on my soap if I’m being honest if it meant I could have you, all of you but I know that’s not an option, I know I can never have that and it hurts._

 _It’s never been more clear to me than the other night when we were all out at the pub and I walked up on you snogging Barbara from your World History course, the two of you just looked so right together and I knew, I knew that these feelings weren’t going away and that the pain I felt in that moment would just be the beginning if I had to live with you bringing Barbara or anyone else back to our flat, having to eat meals on my own because you were out with your missus, or possibly walking in on the two of you cuddled up on the couch in_ our _spot. I couldn’t bear it, so I came to the decision that I’d move in with my friend Perrie from art class for senior year and then who knows after that. I’m really sorry that I ruined everything with this stupid heart of mine, I didn’t mean to and I hope that you can eventually forgive me and we can one day be friends again, because quite frankly I don’t know how to function without you._

_I’ll miss you._

_Love,_

_Zayn_

_P.s for god sakes do remember to separate the colors from the whites when you do the clothes washing yeah?_

Zayn was in love with him. Gorgeous, sweet, talented, funny Zayn was in love with _him_. Zayn the boy who couldn’t pass a dog on the street and not bend down to pet its head and coo at it like a baby, Zayn who knew just how Niall took his tea and always had it ready and waiting for him in the morning before he left for class. Zayn who had rubbed soothing circles into his back as he retched into the toilet on many occasion without complaint and has attended every single one of Niall’s gigs even when it cut into his study time and he basically had to pull an all-nighter the next day to make up for it. That same boy was in love with Niall?

He leant back against the counter for support as he brought the hand that wasn’t holding the note to his chest, feeling his heart hammering double time inside at this realization, and then he frowned when he realized that Zayn was apparently under the very misguided assumption that Niall wasn’t just as mad about him? Glancing up at the clock on the wall he rushed out the door of the apartment, barely looking back to see if it shut properly behind him as he took the stairs two at a time, knowing that Zayn had to be long gone by now but not knowing what else to do.

Finally he’s stood out on the curb just outside their complex and he’s panting, eyes darting up and down the block, the note still clutched in his hand before they finally land on a figure leaning with his back against an old clunker of a car, packed with everything he held dear, well almost everything, head bowed with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. A familiar figure that Niall would know anywhere, just as he thinks this Zayn looks up from the patch of sidewalk he’d been studying as if sensing Niall’s presence. He meets Niall’s gaze and smiles, shrugging sheepishly.

“Couldn't actually make myself leave, at least not without saying goodbye or hell I don't even _know_ I should be halfway to Bradford by now instead I’m standing here like a bloody lovesick ponce just waiting for you to tell me you don't feel the same..."

"I won't..." Niall breathed out hurriedly.

"Sorry?" Zayn asked, for once not knowing what was going on inside of the blonde’s head.

"Won't say that, I’ve never lied to ya Zee & I’m not about to start now."

"Wait so you mean..." Niall rolled his eyes, but his smile belied his annoyance.

"Get over here so I can snog ya yeah? Don’t make me come over dere after ya." Zayn’s forehead was still wrinkled with confusion but his feet couldn’t carry him over fast enough as he cupped Niall’s face in his palms and with his entire body trembling kissed him like he’d been wanting to for the past three years.   

“Zayn.” Niall breathed, pulling away to look at him with so much love shining in his eyes that the darker boy couldn’t help but grin because it’s everything he’s ever dreamed of and more, he quirked an eyebrow in response.

“I love you too ya know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Zayn bit his lip to stop from shouting out with joy because Niall loved him, he actually loved him back, instead he moved in for another kiss but to his dismay Niall moved back so his lips were out of reach making Zayn growl in frustration.

“Oh and Zayn?” The taller boy hummed, still trying to get his kiss, but Niall just brought a hand up to his chest to keep him at arm’s length.

“What?” The corners of Niall’s mouth turned up as he lightly traced the understated muscles beneath Zayn’s shirt.

“Let’s go home.” He said finally and gave one of Zayn’s nipples a playful twist and turned to run back into their complex, giggling delightedly as Zayn yelped, before immediately giving chase.

**Author's Note:**

> yes I realize that must've been one hell of a receipt for Zayn to written all of that on lmao
> 
> <3 Jen


End file.
